Coinbase has launched two onchain USDC lending vaults built on Morpho and curated by Steakhouse Financial: a conservative Prime tier backed by BTC and ETH collateral, and a Higher Yield tier drawing on Ethena-powered assets.

Coinbase launched Coinbase for Agents, a standalone account that lets AI assistants including ChatGPT and Claude execute crypto trades, manage portfolios, and pay for data autonomously under user-defined guardrails. x402 payments integration arrives next week.

The steward of the Cardano blockchain is seeding DeFi liquidity, backing an $80M venture fund and signing enterprise deals — a reversal of its hands-off posture that lands as onchain metrics fall and the network's founder feuds with it over governance.

Binance has activated its tokenized-equity layer, converting live stock positions on its brokerage platform into BNB Chain tokens tradable around the clock. The first five bStocks include Nvidia, Tesla, Circle, Micron, and Sandisk.

Morpho just closed the largest funding round in DeFi history: $175 million at a $2 billion valuation, led by Paradigm, a16z, and Ribbit Capital. In this conversation, Camila Russo sits down with Morpho co-founder Merlin Egalite to unpack the raise and what's next for the protocol. Topics covered: Why Morpho chose a pure token structure over equity, and what it means for long-term alignment How the Morpho Association funds itself, and responses to criticism around transparency and decentralization Midnight, Morpho's next major upgrade — an intent-based, fixed-rate lending model Vault risk and curator accountability, including lessons from the Stream Finance event How Morpho differentiates from Aave despite trailing in TVL The growing wave of institutional interest — from asset managers to neobanks and fintechs Morpho's long-term ambition: capturing a share of the $200 trillion global credit market Guest: Merlin Egalite, Co-founder of Morpho Host: Camila Russo, The Defiant

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong disclosed three platform-scale metrics on Thursday: approximately $1 trillion in annual stablecoin movement, $20 billion in USDC held on platform, and more than 160 million autonomous transactions via the x402 agentic payments protocol in the last year.

Citigroup is making tokenized interests in private companies available to wealth-management and institutional clients on SIX Digital Exchange, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank has already completed its first transaction and is in talks with additional private firms.

Delaware and New Jersey each advanced bills this week to ban cryptocurrency ATMs statewide, citing over $400 million in annual nationwide fraud losses and a scam pattern that disproportionately targets older residents.

Digital Asset has closed a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, with HSBC, Apollo, CME, BNP Paribas, ADIA, ABN Amro, S&P Global, Tradeweb and more than 20 other institutional names joining as investors.

The agreement with developer BHL Group is an early-stage memorandum of understanding, and the Alba Bay community is not slated to break ground until 2027